


@SharkTankHank

by Manu



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Crush at First Sight, M/M, Unbeta'd, inktober prompts, nonexistent research of zoos or wildlife or normal human interactions and reactions, personal fictober
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-02
Updated: 2018-10-02
Packaged: 2019-07-24 13:05:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16175648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Manu/pseuds/Manu
Summary: A visit to the aquarium.





	@SharkTankHank

**Author's Note:**

> Personal "Fictober" challenge of taking [Inktober's prompts](https://twitter.com/inktober/status/1035886145173745664) and writing something short for each and posting them daily. Ships, fandoms and everything else will vary. Patently unbeta'd.
> 
>  
> 
> Day 2: tranquil

Nico’s head was about to explode. Between being dragged out of bed at an ungodly early hour—coupled with his inability to sleep on moving vehicles—, the frankly disgustingly large crowd he had to navigate to keep up with his friends, and his newfound but already deeply entrenched hate for zoos, he lamented being friends with people who would subject him to such horrors. He threw a murderous look at Jason’s wide back. He felt someone taking his hand and squeezing it gently. Hazel looked at him sympathetically.

“We really should limit his social media use,” he declared nodding at Jason. “Between this and that parrot business...”

“I know,” Hazel said. “Although I think it was Piper who showed him the video.”

“Hey, hey,” Piper protested, joining them from behind. “It was a quick offhand ‘hey, check this out’ type of thing, okay? He’s the one who turned it into a whole, well... thing.”

“And Leo wasn’t much help,” Hazel added now staring at Leo’s back next to Jason’s. “He…”

“It’s done.” Nico threw his hands up in the air, resigned. He sighed and dodged a distracted woman with a stroller, making him bump against a cross-looking guy. He apologized and promptly fled.

They joined the long line outside the aquarium. Not many people were in front of them. Jason’s awful gambit had paid off. A hippy-looking guy put up an improvised sign at the entrance: “AS SEEN ON TWITTER!!! @SharkTankHank!!! LIMITED TIME!!!” He walked away laughing about something.

“His name’s Hank?” Leo asked. Nico agreed with the mocking tone.

“Hey, Nico?” Jason said. “Could you record the show? Please? I don’t uh… I don’t wanna miss anything, and you don’t seem to be that into it so…”

“Sure, no problem,” Nico accepted the professional-looking camera and hung it from his neck. As the day so far had proved, he had a hard time refusing Jason. Especially when he weaponized the baby blues and acknowledged Nico’s discomfort.

 

Awful minutes later, they were inside the room with the shark tank. It was all very dramatically lit. The shark looked nervous, swimming from side to side. Nico’s hatred for zoos grew. He sneered at the palpable anticipation of the small crowd that had entered with them.

Then the guy came out. Nico hadn’t actually seen the video that had sparked all this, so he actually gasped. It was actually masked by the noise of the group: a couple of kids cheering, some people giggling excitedly, others chattering loudly. The sudden uptick in noise and commotion would’ve caused Nico to bolt or pass out, but the noise, the heat of the place, the bumping and smell, all of it began to dim for him.

The guy was hot. Nico vaguely recalled Piper mentioning it in passing and Hazel confirming it. Seeing him now, Nico thought they had really undersold the sheer hotness of the dude to him. If they had adequately conveyed it or maybe if he had actually seen the video, he would’ve been the one driving them all here breaking the speed limit on the way.

It wasn’t just the athletic build—perfectly shown off by the fact that he was wearing nothing but a small speedo—, the toned arms and legs, and the set of abs on display. He could find all that just by looking at Jason when he came out of the shower of their dorm room. It wasn’t just the charming smile with a hint of dangerous mischievousness either, nor even the striking eyes, visibly green through the water’s and crystal’s refraction and other optic effects. All that helped loads, sure, but it was the way he moved and acted that sealed the deal. Poise and grace had only ever been vague concepts to Nico, but here they were on full display for him to admire and embarrassingly gape at.

It was as if the guy belonged underwater rather than on land, as if he had lived there his whole life.

Also, no way his name was Hank.

The guy did a couple of closed pirouettes and tight turns that gained some applause from the audience, not that Nico noticed them. The guy smiled, pleased, and swam fast and elegant towards the main attraction: the huge-ass shark. The animal had looked increasingly nervous from the moment the group had come in close to the tank. It had stopped pacing and was cooped up in a far corner.

Nico’s heart skipped a beat, his whole body tensed up and remained that way during the guy’s arm’s slow and long journey from his side to the side of the shark’s face. Nico’s eyes darted from the fearsome teeth of the beast to the winning smirk of the guy. Human and animal finally made contact and Nico’s world narrowed even more. The shark visibly relaxed and the guy put another hand on the shark, while starting to rub with the other, calming him down completely. The guy’s winning smirk turned fond, forgetting for a minute about his audience, and dropping the slightly showboating act entirely.

He continued to rub the shark’s skin softly, warmth in his eyes. Nico began to feel very much like the shark: calmer every second. The world around him went away except for the scene before him. He stared and took as much of it in as he could: the soft undulations of the shark’s tail, matching his own breathing; the soft underwater lighting illuminating the scene, letting him see the muscles slightly rippling beneath the diver’s skin while he continued to interact with the shark; those eyes that Nico wished desperately were looking at him instead with such tenderness; the jet black hair floating and framing the handsome face in a ghostly, ethereal manner…

Nico wondered briefly how long had the guy been underwater and how was he still holding his breath when an oxygen tank appeared out of nowhere and, without missing a beat, the guy inhaled deeply from it. Then, after giving back the tank to the nether it had come from, the guy looked at the shark’s face for a moment, nodded and then an astonishing thing happened: Slowly, the guy began to swim around, his eyes now closed, and the shark impossibly followed and started to mimic his movements. Nico half-heartedly wanted to look around him to see if anyone else was seeing this, but quickly dismissed that impulse; there was no one else in the world anyway.

The show went on. From what little Nico had cared to hear Jason gush about, he had expected an exploitative mess where one ended up feeling horrible for the poor animal. Maybe it was his full-on crush on the guy or that he had used up his skepticism about zoos and capacity to being annoyed on the way, but he just stood there, mesmerized by the graceful movements and the deep human-animal connection on display. He stood there, calmer and more relaxed than he had felt in weeks, tranquil. This little trip was fixed to be the shit cherry on top of the crap cake that had been the past few months for him; but it seemed that, for once, Jason’s attempt at cheering him up had worked.

He just stood there, not wanting the spectacle to end.

Inevitably, it did. With one last wave and an elaborate water ballet move, the guy went away. They were shepherded out of the room, leaving the shark alone to be fed.

“Oh, man,” Jason said, “that was fantastic.”

The rest of his friends nodded in agreement. Nico still hadn’t quite returned to the mundane world.

“Nico? Did you like it? It was worth the trip, don’t you think?” Hazel asked, elbowing him lightly.

He blinked rapidly. The world was unblurring, there were other people in the world now.

“Huh?”

“Did you get good footage?” Jason asked.

“I…” Nico began, then stopped dead on his tracks. “Oh… uhm, sorry… I…”

The camera had hung dumbly against his chest, turned off, for the whole performance.

“I recorded some,” Frank barged in, conciliatory. “My phone’s camera is utter crap but the lighting was good so…”

“It’s fine,” Jason said, apparently meaning it. “There were other people, maybe with better cameras since the first few vids went viral and all. I’ll search later. We had like the best seats in the house, but it’s fine, really. Some others will pop up in the next few days, I’m sure. At least we saw it live,” he went on to gush about it.

Nico wanted to join in on the gushing, but his mood had dropped to an even lower low than how he had come in. More than feeling crappy for disappointing Jason, he felt bad about not having a way to remember it himself. He had never been one for taking pics or videos as mementos of his experiences, but this one he wanted to relive over and over in any way and as clearly as possible.

“Hey, guys?” Piper materialized behind Jason, startling everyone. “I think I got something better than some video.”

Was that wink directed at him?

While they were talking about videos going viral and cameras, she had finessed their way backstage, as it were. A blonde girl that Nico recognized as the guide stood now next to Piper, who introduced her as Annabeth.

“Come on, then, this way,” for a second, Nico thought she had said that directly to him. The thought expired quickly, drowned by his sheer panic at the realization of who they were going to meet.

She was still talking.

“No, that was the last show today and well, ever.”

“What, really?” Leo said, looking back at the crowds before the group disappeared through a door that led to a long, dark hallway. “So, all those people…?”

“No one reads the informational brochures or listens to the crappy sound system. We posted it on the zoo’s official profiles but frankly we don’t have many followers,” she explained, not worried at all by the prospect of having to deal with pissed off visitors. Nico’s quick judgement of her was that she was more than capable of handling that and more. “We hoped and asked for that viral account with the vids to retweet it but…”

“@SharkTankHank,” Leo said with a smirk.

“Yes,” she said, mirroring his expression. “Oh, he hated that. And Grover keeps bringing it up. But it’s all offset by how much he’s loving being _a star,_ so don’t feel too bad. He says he doesn’t do it for the attention but, I mean, you saw him…”

Nico nodded, now sure she had talked directly to him.

“And I’m not helping by bringing _fans_ _backstage,_ ” she said, rolling her eyes and then stopping in front of a dingy, metal door. She opened it and led them inside.

The guy greeted them with a smile. He was still shirtless. Nico observed him carefully. Up close and on land, he still looked every bit as hot as he did during the show. His movements weren’t the epitome of grace but there was still something about him. That particular crush hadn’t been immediately squashed as Nico had begun to hope on their way there. Damn it.

Not-Hank was now talking to him. Damn it.

“How you doin’?” he said, extending his hand to Nico.

Nico took it and awkwardly shook it.

“Fine,” he croaked.

“Did you enjoy the show?”

“Yes, of course. You were magnificent,” Nico replied.

Holy shit.

Not-Hank laughed, and said: “Magnificent’s great.”

“Yeah…”

Awkward silence.

“How come is the last one?” Jason, ever the savior, broke it.

“We’re releasing Bessie,” Percy said. Nico heard Annabeth say his actual name since he missed the initial introductions by staring at him like a creep. “We only got her for a couple of weeks since she was injured, and rescue brought her here. She healed up quick and seemed to enjoy my company, so…” He shrugged handsomely. He hadn’t turned to look at Jason.

“You bonded like that with a wild shark and mounted a whole show in less than a couple of weeks?” Nico blurted out, overwhelmed by seemingly being the recipient of Percy’s undivided attention.

“Yeah,” Percy replied, smiling at him.

They continued to chat, with Percy being infuriatingly charming the whole time. 

 

After some pictures, one of Percy—still blessedly shirtless—and Nico alone together that will now serve as a quite satisfying memento, they were ready to get home.

“Hey, I heard you guys couldn’t record it?” Percy called after them.

“Oh, right,” Jason said. “Nico…”

“Didn’t realize it wasn’t charged,” the alluded supplied, holding up the camera.

“I mean, you could come next week,” Percy suggested. “I’ve been practicing something with Levy, our new arrival.”

“It’s an octopus,” Annabeth clarified.

“Yeah, just bring your cameraman Nico here,” Percy said, putting a friendly hand on Nico’s shoulder.

Nico’s laugh was more of a quiet wheeze.

“Yeah, I mean, if he wants to,” Jason said somewhat dubious, completely unaware that Nico fucking loved zoos. 


End file.
